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I have a perplexing issue with my Verizon Iphone 4 at my house.
Background: Never had reception issues with my Iphone in or out of the house. Now cell reception has gone downhill & I get dropped calls and maybe two bars out of four. Same phone for three years. Updates all good, been into store to discuss, did the *228 roam update & even looked into possible tower issues of which V said towers supporting neighborhood service are showing good. WTF?! My friend has had same issue since getting her Iphone on Verizon, dropped calls & low reception. My phone works fine everywhere else...
My friend bitched about the issue to Verizon & they sent her a free (read refurbished) Iphone 5. Guess what, same issue.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Interesting that Verizon went that route. When we had that problem several years ago with an older (non-smart) phone they attributed the problem to the demand on the tower with more and more people in the area using it. The result was waiting close to a year until the tower got upgraded.
Interesting that Verizon went that route. When we had that problem several years ago with an older (non-smart) phone they attributed the problem to the demand on the tower with more and more people in the area using it. The result was waiting close to a year until the tower got upgraded.
This is where I think the issue lies; cell tower needs upgrading.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ladywithafan
This is where I think the issue lies; cell tower needs upgrading.
Talk to neighbors, if they are having the same problem and you all complain and/or threaten to change to another carrier they might consider an upgrade.
I don’t trust phone companies to be honest about cell service. It’s impossible for an ordinary person to document and prove the strength or weakness of a given signal. Any evidence is anecdotal at best.
On the other hand, if they came out and said “Yes, there is a problem and you will have crappy service for a year or so,” customers would leave in droves.
Verizon is doing tower work to upgrade the over-the-air capacity of their LTE network in many cities (adding channels over newly purchased frequency licenses), so they're adding and replacing a lot of those massive tower-top antennas. I know that your iPhone is 3G, but to work on the 4G part of the network, they often have to bring down the voice/text (1X) and the 3G parts of the network temporarily.
I've used Verizon for a long, long time, and I've seen them through a few network upgrades. Their normally reliable service seems to go haywire at random. It always comes back eventually though.
It will probably be back to normal in a few weeks to a couple months, and then be mostly reliable for years to come, at least until the next network upgrade.
Regular customer service reps usually deal in account and billing matters, and don't really have the kind of info they'd need to really tell you what's going on. The technical support/troubleshooting people might be of more help.
OP, what city are you in? or are you in a rural area?
I agree with everything Thegonagle said. Totally spot on.
Typically in the evenings, base stations go through their maintenance cycle but since you are having it only at your place, it definitely sounds like there is some upgrading or maintenance happening with the tower closest to you.
I might be able to find out more for you depending on the tower manufacturer (Alcatel, Ericsson etc).
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